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that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt ; (which my covenant they brake, although I was a husband unto them, saith the Lord :) but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel: After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts, and will be their God and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour and every man his brother, saying, Know ye the Lord for they shall all know me from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord."*

After these covenant stipulations of what God himself would do, shall it be said that every thing is left to the casual decisions of the self-determining power, certain only as they are foreseen by God?

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V. This independent potency of the will is flatly contradicted. "Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy."+

VI. Nor is this dependence on divine efficiency any discouragement, but the only encouragement we have to hope for success. "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure."

* Jer. 31. 31-34. † John 1. 13. Rom. 9. 16. Phil. 2. 12, 13.

VII. It ill comports with the theory of persuasion that moral inability is ascribed to the sinner. To say to a man, You have so strong an inclination to go, that you cannot stop unless I persuade you, would certainly be a very unusual mode of address. But moral inability is ascribed to the sinner. "A deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?" "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil." "No man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me draw him. Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me except it were given unto him of Father." my Dr. Fitch says that to draw means here to induce but as though this parrying interpretation was foreseen, it is added as a parallel expression," except it were given unto him of my Father."

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VIII. The opposite theory is, that God merely presents inducements which some yield to and others reject. Now in such an attempt at persuasion how can there be any great exhibition of power? This theory then is flatly contradicted by all those texts which speak of regeneṛation and sanctification as displays of mighty power. "Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power." "That the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost,-through mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God." "My preaching. was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power;

* Isai. 44. 20. Jer. 13. 23. John 6. 44, 65.

that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men but in the power of God." "We have this treasure in earthern vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us." "For he that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me towards the Gentiles." "Whereof I was

made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power.— Wherefore I desire-that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.-Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us; unto him be glory in the Church by Jesus Christ-world without end." "That I may know him and the power of his resurrection." "Strengthened with all might according to his glorious power.-Giving thanks unto the Father which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light; who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son.-Whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working which worketh in me mightily." "For our Gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Ghost.-And ye became followers of us, having received the word—with joy of the Holy Ghost." "The eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that ye may know-what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power which he wrought in Christ

when he raised him from the dead and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places."* If there was no

other text in the Bible against the theory of powerless persuasion, this would be enough. How could a bare suggestion of motives be "the exceeding greatness of his power," and "according to the working of his mighty power" in the resurrection and exaltation of Christ?

IX. The different names by which this great moral change is called, denote the efficient act of God, and some of them his mighty power.

(1.) It is called the circumcision of the heart; which implies far more than the bare suggestion of motives. It imports the actual excision "of the filth of the flesh." "The Lord thy God will circumcise thy heart and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul." "In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ."+

(2.) It is called the opening of the eyes of the blind and the unstopping of the ears of the deaf. "The Lord openeth the eyes of the blind." "In that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness." "The eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped." "I the Lord have called thee-to

1 Cor. 2. 4, 5.

2 Cor. 4. 7.

Phil. 3. 10.

* Ps. 110. 3. Rom. 15. 16-19. Gal. 2. 8. Eph. 1. 18-20. and 3. 7, 13, 16, 17, 20. Col. 1. 11-13, 29. 1 Thes. 1. 5, 6.

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open the blind eyes. And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not.-I will make darkness light before them.-Hear ye deaf and look ye blind that ye may see.' "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach-recovering of sight to the blind.”*

To show that he had come to execute this office, our Saviour opened the bodily eyes and ears and to make the cases more parallel, he opened them by a word: and when he said to the deaf ear, "Ephphatha, that is, Be opened," who ever dreamt that the word itself produced the effect, or had any more potency than the rod of Moses or the trumpets of Jericho?

(3.) It is called a new birth. If then the first birth is altogether an effect of divine power, so should be the second. And though in the life which commences at the first birth, man is active, yet in that reception of life he is passive. The impartation of the living principle is wholly the operation of God. And if the second birth is limited to the causal influence of God in producing the activity of the new life, man is passive here also. If the name is extended to the new exercises, (as it certainly is in those two instances in which the word is called the seed,†) then man is both passive and active in regeneration; passive as he is acted upon, and active as he puts forth the new exercises and he must be acknowledged to be thus far passive by all who hold to divine efficiency. "Which were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." "Verily, verily I say unto *Ps. 146. 8. Isai. 29. 18. and 35. 5. and 42. 6, 7, 16, 18. Luke 4. 18. † James 1. 18. 1 Pet. 1. 23.

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